Once again, Rudolf came home from work and literally did not recognize his wife: he hadn’t seen anything like this since he was a child.
Svetka, his neighbor in the village where little Rudik used to visit in summer, had bees. And one bee had stung Svetka on her lower lip, causing it to swell badly. Back then, Svetka was terribly self-conscious about it and even refused to go outside, but Rudik thought she looked really funny.
Rudolf saw something similar on his wife’s face. Of course, Maria’s lips didn’t look as dramatic as Svetka’s, but the man was clearly not pleased with the results of the beauty specialists’ work on his wife’s face.
“Well? Do you like it?” his wife flirted with him.
“My goodness — woman, you look exactly like a Japanese beekeeper,” Rudolf thought to himself.
“Maria, I have always been honest with you… I know you won’t like my answer now either — no, I don’t like it. I think your natural lips are much more beautiful than these stung ones,” Rudolf said seriously.
“Well, darling, it’s only the first day after the procedure, in two weeks they will look completely different, and you will see the difference — what it was and what it has become!” Maria cheered.
“Maria, honestly, your experiments with your appearance are starting to worry me. I wanted to go skiing for New Year, and you can’t come with me. In the evening you can’t walk with me either because the frosty air dries your skin. Now we have to wait another two weeks for your lips to heal? What’s next?” Rudolf complained.
But Maria no longer listened to her husband’s opinion. Her Telegram blog took off, and her short TikTok videos were breaking records.
“Yes, yes! I already have 100,000 subscribers!” Maria shouted loudly one evening — Rudolf even got scared, unable to hear the gist of his wife’s outbursts.
“What happened, dear?” Rudolf called from the living room to the second floor at his wife’s shout.
“You can congratulate me! I have 100,000 subscribers! And you said all my changes don’t suit me! But people think otherwise! Look at how many positive comments I have, they even send me bouquets and smileys!” his wife rejoiced like a child.
“You know, my beauty salon, where you bought me a membership, offered me to become the face of their brand! Can you imagine? Now they will even pay me for the rejuvenating procedures I do there. And, naturally, all the costs will be covered by the salon itself!” Maria clapped her hands like a little girl.
“Maria, what blog, what costs?! Don’t we have enough money?! If you like to run a blog and socialize — that’s always fine, something to do. But why advertise all these corrections? Maybe start with simple grandmother’s recipes for rejuvenation?” pragmatic Rudolf reasoned.
“Like what, for example?” Maria asked in surprise. By that time, she already looked more like a heavily made-up doll than a beautiful attractive woman.
“Well, for example, you can say that healthy sleep benefits your health. And if you don’t drink martinis with your girlfriends on weekends and quit smoking — your face will look younger, and your teeth whiter,” Rudolf suggested seriously.
“Or about facial cleansing… There is a method — steam in a good steam bath, steam the face with a broom, you can even lie on planks with a broom on your face, and then apply real honey to the steamed skin. My grandmother did that in the village, and at 60 she looked 10 years younger!” Rudolf tried to bring fresh ideas to his wife.
“What nonsense are you talking? You don’t understand the subject, so don’t advise!” Maria shouted at her husband so loudly that Rudolf closed the door to her makeup room and didn’t approach her again that evening.
Rudolf felt his wife was caught in a whirlpool of this showy life. Maria was no longer interested in her husband’s affairs or his opinion about her appearance, because she received all opinions from her subscribers, who strongly advised her to continue experimenting with her look.
All Maria’s social networks filled with colorful photos where the woman posed in tight dresses with swollen lips, painted eyebrows, and false eyelashes.
At the same time, Maria became interested in fasting procedures and almost stopped eating normal food.
Rudolf was losing hope to say anything against her appearance experiments. His once beloved and desired wife was drifting further and further away from him.
When the woman started altering her breasts, Rudolf took this “investment” philosophically, saying nothing to avoid another scandal.
And then more changes followed. The woman clearly enjoyed her transformations. It wasn’t just eyebrows and lips anymore — there was facial plastic surgery, lifts, and more.
Along with the increasing number of changes, her social media audience grew, motivating Maria to decide on more radical transformations.
By the time Maria turned 40, she completely stopped caring about her husband’s affairs and their teenage son’s schooling, and the family rarely spent time together.
Rudolf tried to establish a dialogue with his wife but understood that listening to endless monologues about her appearance had long ceased to interest him.
In just a few years, Maria turned from the dream woman into a woman with a standard appearance, the kind you see en masse on the streets of his city.
Sometimes Rudolf confused his similarly made-up, big-lipped secretary with his brow-and-lip-altered wife.
Even in bed, Rudolf noticed he no longer liked touching his wife’s artificial forms: there was none of the former warmth…
As usual during the New Year holidays, Rudolf went with his son Ivan to a ski resort, where they used to go as a family every year.
The weather was beautiful. There was a light frost, and the sun shone brightly. Ivan was lazy today and didn’t go to ski down the slope.
Rudolf took his equipment and began to ski down a relatively steep slope slowly. But suddenly, he saw a clearly inexperienced skier who decided this slope suited her.
The skier had no idea how to brake and was rapidly gaining speed, unsteadily standing on skis.
Rudolf realized it could end badly and, managing to catch up with her at the start of the slope, made her stop.
“Brake! There is a steep slope ahead, you can’t go there! You’ll crash!” Rudolf shouted.
“Spread your heels and cross your toes!” Rudolf shouted, realizing the girl had no idea about skiing. “Who let you on this slope with such poor skills?!”
Ahead was an even steeper slope, so Rudolf decided not to delay; he came up to the girl, hugged her, and with all his strength stopped her movement.
“Why are you doing this? Why are you saving me?” suddenly came the nervous and even hysterical voice of the girl as both skiers came to a full stop.
“You’d better say thank you! You would have crashed on the next turn. You can’t even maneuver, and look at the slope here!” Rudolf cursed, realizing he was dealing with some unstable person.
“Why did you stop me?! Maybe I wanted to crash into a tree at full speed so it would all be over!” the girl cried.
The stranger unfastened her helmet, and a mop of blonde curls neatly lay on her ski jacket. When she took off her ski goggles, Rudolf noted that the stranger was unusually beautiful.
Within 20 minutes, Rudolf was giving the young stranger coffee with cream and attentively listening to her life story.
“My man keeps telling me I’m ugly! He thinks I should do my lips, change my nose, and everything else!” the woman hinted that her boyfriend was unhappy with other aspects of her appearance as well.
Rudolf even involuntarily laughed at the young man’s demands but then restrained himself and apologized for his inappropriate reaction.
“Just tell your boyfriend to go to hell! You definitely conquered me with your beauty!” Rudolf replied sincerely.
They talked, sharing their life stories until the mountain café closed.
A year later, Rudolf Ivanovich divorced Maria, who never understood her husband and went down the path of beauty transformations, and Rudolf married Olga, whom he saved at the ski resort.
Rudolf’s son Ivan, already a teenager, calmly accepted his parents’ divorce and at least did not blame his father, seeing the unhealthy changes in his mother’s appearance.
A couple of years later, the fashion for plump lips and big eyebrows faded, and Maria’s blog began to die down. She was no longer praised as much for her appearance, and beauty salons soon stopped using her to advertise their products because she no longer fit their standards — the artificial nature of her transformations was too obvious.
The woman lived only on the capital she got from divorcing her husband. She never made any conclusions, believing that Rudolf had shamelessly and brazenly left her for a younger mistress.